My lone survivor was hive 4 from last year, but I think I will re-label it as hive 1 for 2015. The queen is Sally 2c, but for simplicity sake I will just call her Sally. She is doing fine and seems to be off to a good start. I put the bottom box on top and moved the top box to the bottom, but left the middle box in the middle. These are mediums, as you might have guessed. There are now about six to eight frames with brood on them, most with more than 50% covered. There were also stores of pollen and a little bit of brood honey. I have been feeding now for a week or so and they are taking the syrup quickly. I think I will stick with the Boardman feeders as I only have one hive and can watch it pretty regularly. I will check it in a few days to see if Sally has started using the top box.
I would love to propagate the Sally line, but I don’t want to mess with my only hive. So I will leave it alone. If it swarms, then I will hope to catch it and will get my Sally 3 after all. If it doesn’t swarm, then hopefully they will make lots of honey for me this year.
I definitely want to get a new hive before winter, so that means catching a swarm or getting some bees from a split from someone else.
I also didn’t treat for Varroa last year. The mite counts seemed low and with all the new queens and swarms, there were interruptions in the Varroa life cycle and that may have been the reason. This year, however, I will treat probably twice, and will use the sugar roll technique this year for the count.